Blood Bond
by Souba-kun
Summary: The power of Grenth touches many, but only a few are able to take hold and control it. With power comes sacrifice; with sacrifice, solitude. RR please


_Well, this is... pretty much my first Guild Wars fanfic, though I've been thinking about writing one for a while. Be nice? 'Blood Bond' is a Necromancer skill, and I thought it worked well for the title of this story. I own Dans, but nothing else :P _

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**Blood Bond****  
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A pair of light gray eyes blinked themselves awake against the autumn sun. With a light groan, Dans Erebos propped himself up on his elbows. For a few hopeful moments, he was anticipating another coughing fit – But time passed and the familiar dryness in his throat did not make it's appearance. Sighing, the young necromancer got to his feet, picked up his weapons, and headed towards the city gates.

They said it was his fate. He was chosen, chosen out of so many, by Grenth himself... It made little sense to Dans at the time. He couldn't understand why his body was betraying him - why life seemed to leave it, only to make way for pain and illness; why the animals, seemingly everywhere, seemed to shrink back from the touch of his hand. Had he done something wrong, was he being punished? It seemed… cruel to him that this should happen. That nobody would come to his aid when he cried out in the dead of night, that he was no longer welcome at the meal. If he strained his memory, he could remember a time before the haze took hold of his child-self, when he was much like other children. Laughing, playing, running. These days he could barely catch his breath after a sprint from Ascalon to Ashford.

The road to the abbey had grown on him in the years he's spent walking it, back and forth. The skales down by the river that would at times venture out onto the path somehow always reminded Dans of himself. They were ugly, wet, leathery things, with little to offer save their fins, which were sought after by a few local merchants. Their only worth was in death. His worth was in ordering it.

His light leather boots were not made for walking long distances. The road sloped down after its light rise, and a merchant or two would always set up camp by the small patch of trees here. To the left lay a cluster of farmers' homes, as well as the bridge to the neighboring county. To the right was a large, expansive field, barren for it had been overrun with pests. Dans spent a few moments looking at the abbey ahead of him. It was only a few dozen paces to its gates. He could manage that much, couldn't he? He was barely twenty, still in his youth. But things were different for him. The power of Grenth, the ability to take life and spend it as one wishes, came with a taxing price. By now, he was used to the restrictive hold on his lungs, the spasms and convulsions running through his hands, and even the sickly, gray-white tone of his skin, thin like paper and showing whatever was underneath it. Yet still he did not understand. He had no idea why it was that when he focused his mind, a strange force would lift him up ever so slightly and then a creature would drop dead. Acceptance without understanding. That was his price.

"Ah, Dans. Do come in." A woman's voice said.  
He bows deeply, laying his staff and chakram on the stone floor. It is only proper in the presence of one's superiors.  
"I trust you have spoken to my colleague, Kasha?" She asks. Her voice is almost like that of a king: full of regality, wisdom, modesty… beauty.  
"Yes, my lady." Dans replies.   
Munne looks up from the parchment she has been studying. Her dark eyes seem to search the very depths of the young Necromancer's soul. "Dans, is there something you would like to speak to me about?"  
The question catches him off guard. Those affiliated with Dwayna feared Munne and were quite apprehensive of her. Necromancers like him held her in high regard, as the head of their order… He himself, however, had come to see her as a mentor, perhaps even a confidant. Years ago, when his father brought him to the abbey believing his son had been cursed by a demon, it was Munne who had taken him in taught him to direct the darkness in his body, to manipulate it and keep it from consuming him.  
"No… Nothing, my lady. A little under the weather."  
"Mmm, Mhenlo says it might rain." She says, looking thoughtfully at the stained window.  
"Perhaps. Brother Mhenlo says many things." He half-agrees. Dans wasn't known for taking a firm stand on things.   
"Well, I am afraid I must return to these. Oberan says he found them in one of the lower chambers of the Catacombs."  
At the mention of Oberan, Dans feels a shiver run up his spine.  
"I take my leave, then." He says, bowing once more, picking up his things. Silently cursing, he sees himself out.

The life of a Necromancer is built upon with three things: pain, solitude, and control. One exchanged pain for control. Control of life, your own and that of others. Solitude comes as a mere after-effect.

Dans had stayed in Ashford for the night, deciding it would be easier to journey to Regent Valley at the break of dawn. The monks of Dwayna were... tolerant of his kind, if not polite, though he knew well they would rather not have to withstand the presence of Grenth in their marbled halls. Sitting on a bare-bones bed, he looked out of the dusty window at the patches of silver he could see through the leaves. Darkness changes everything. Trees become clawed beasts, the moon an ever-watchful eye.  
Children become servants of death.


End file.
